


I'm Only Happy When it Rains

by bottlecapmermaid



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 15:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottlecapmermaid/pseuds/bottlecapmermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in most senses of the word, Lavi is taken in by a quiet boy who only goes out at night. Obligatory vampire au, written for Laven Week 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Advertisement

The rain is cold, the lights harsh, and the wind sharp. No matter how small he tries to make himself, no matter how he huddles inside his filthy jacket, the rain, light, and wind find Lavi. He can’t decide if the worst part is his nose or his ears; on the one hand, his nose is running like an especially unappealing tap and is completely numb, but on the other hand, his ears ache with cold and he wonders if the rain could freeze inside his head. Usually places at the ends of alleys are relatively sheltered, with extra points for high, solid walls. This alley even has a nice big dumpster near the end for extra shelter, but the wind and rain are unusually persistent tonight.

Someone must have been cleaning, because a huge stack of newspapers spills out of the dumpster and onto the ground. They’re relatively new and clean, and not yet completely disintegrating in the water. He wads up a couple pages and stuffs them down his boots. It’s too late to keep the cold out, but the paper will absorb and block some of the water. One of the worst feelings in the world is wet leather, particularly old, dirty, abused leather, as the tattered lining of Lavi’s jacket is happy to remind him. He needs a bigger one, this one isn’t nearly large enough to cover someone his size.

He has seen nights like this, and he knows it is basically useless to try to sleep. He’s not afraid of freezing to death or anything like that; he knows he won’t freeze when it’s only like this, but this is the kind of cold that makes you ache everywhere and gets worse the closer you get to sleep. One of the newspapers catches his eye, and digs around in his pocket for a pen. Maybe he doesn’t always have money or food, but he always has a pen and paper. Nobody ever misses cheap pens from shops, and flyers are always blank on the back. Instead of actually reading the ads, he carefully redresses all the people in the height of fashion from 1887, for no real reason other than that he wants to draw hats and ruffles. The results are cartoonish and not up to his usual standards, but his fingers are stiff and blue with cold. He scans the pages for any possible jobs, but doesn’t see any that would likely be interested in hiring someone who only showers once in a blue moon and doesn’t own a comb. His hair eats combs anyway, it’s not worth owning one.

Just as he begins feeling sleepy, something crunches underfoot much too close for comfort. It’s still around the corner of the dumpster he’s huddled behind, but it’s atypical for something to get so close without his notice. It’s no use hoping it’s a dog or something, that kind of self-deception only leads to disappointment at best and danger at worst. Still, he’s too tired to really be scared, much less get up and try to chase someone away from his one-night nest. If he’s lucky, as he never is, whoever it is will go away. Hope spring eternal, or something.

A face appears around the edge of the dumpster. Of course he isn’t lucky, why did he ever bother thinking he might be? He looks up at the face, squinting through the rain. Two expressionless blue eyes are fixed on him, the owner showing no surprise at finding Lavi. It’s hard to tell with the white hair, but the face looks young, with faint traces of roundness still remaining. This kid certainly can’t be any older than Lavi.

“Go away,” Lavi says. “I was here first.”

“It’s dangerous to sleep outside,” the kid says. His voice is flat and uninterested.

“You’re telling me.” Why can’t this cat leave him alone? It’s some ungodly hour of the night and Lavi’s face is about to freeze off and this guy comes out of nowhere and tries to tell him where to sleep.

Rainwater drips steadily from the kid’s hair and down his face. He doesn’t have an umbrella or anything, not even a hood on his jacket. “Are you cold?”

“Sure.” Who wouldn’t be cold out in this hell of a night? Or maybe this kid isn’t familiar with shaking and skin discoloration as symptoms of being extremely cold and wet for an extremely long time.

The kid stares down at him for an uncomfortably long time, still expressionless, until smiling suddenly. The change is unsettling, but not unwelcome. “You could come with me.”

“Thanks, no. I don’t go home with strangers in the middle of the night.” That’s it, this guy is not worth bothering with. Lavi just wants to go to sleep and wait for him to go away.

“I never said anything about going home.”

“I’m even less in the mood for going somewhere that’s not a house.” He pulls his scarf over his face. This conversation is over.

“This isn’t a safe place to sleep. Just come with me, I know somewhere safer.”

Lavi is not given to baseless paranoia. That said, it will be a cold day in hell that he starts just going places with strangers who promise him somewhere to sleep. Something about this kid is weirdly compelling, though. For some reason, Lavi can tell he’s not lying. Maybe he’s just reached his limit for cold and wetness and misery, but what does he have to lose? Even if it does come down to a fight, he can take this kid. “What makes this patch of street any more dangerous than one a block down?”

“This place is…” the kid trails off, glancing around at the wall. “It’s complicated.”

“I don’t have anything else to do tonight.”

“It’s a feeding ground for vampires.”

“That’s not even a good joke.” Maybe he was wrong, maybe this kid is tripping on something, or maybe he’s honestly not connected to reality. Either way, Lavi doesn’t have time for this.

“Look.” The kid points to the wall. Spray painted in red behind Lavi is an Egyptian eye with a cat’s pupil. “You’ve seen that around, but you don’t know what it means. That’s what vampires use to mark the places they meet with humans for, ah, meals. If you stay here, you’re basically advertising that you’re willing to let someone feed from you.”  
Lavi stares. The kid seems perfect serious, but what kind of person actually says things like that? A prank like this takes effort; the kid would have had to put up the mark and then check the spot for god knows how long before finding some bastard trying to sleep there. “Okay. So what are you saying, I should go sleep across the street so nobody sucks my blood?”

“I don’t know if I would put it quite like that, but yes.”

“Fine. If you’re offering me a couch to sleep on or whatever for a night, I won’t say no. Just don’t kill me in my sleep.” This is by far the weirdest thing he’s ever taken someone up on, not counting that one time with the lizards, but that time was worth it. The worst thing that can come out of this is that he has to keep this guy from killing him or something, but it’s not like people haven’t tried to kill him before. He knows what he’s getting into.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be perfectly safe.” The kid smiles again, holding out a hand. “My name is Allen Walker.”

Maybe his hands are too numb to feel anything, but when Lavi shakes his hand, he feels nothing, no heat, no tremor. It’s like shaking a doll’s hand, but with a better grip. “Lavi. Let’s get out of here if you’re so worried about bloodsuckers.”

The walk is short and silent, except for Lavi’s sniffling. Being dragged out of his sleeping place by a teenager is undignified, but doing so with a running nose is the height of ridiculousness. Allen leads the way to an apartment building that Lavi always assumed was abandoned. Apparently it has at least one occupant. The lobby is lit by a few buzzing fluorescent lights, and the walls are covered with graffiti of varying age, quality, and language. Allen has to press the button for the elevator four times before the thing comes, and it clanks and shudders irritably on the way to the third floor.

The lock on the apartment door is sticky and stubborn, and Allen throws his shoulder against it before it opens with a creak. “Come in. I live alone.”

Inside is Spartan, with few obvious decorations or personal belongings. A few books rest on the battered kitchen table, worn paperbacks probably picked out of discount bins or the trash.

Some kind of sweet smell hangs in the air, not a rotting or unpleasant smell, but hard to place.

“You can sleep on the couch. I’ll get a blanket.” Allen makes his way deeper into the apartment, vanishing into the gloom.

In the tiny living room is a sagging, ratty couch. Yellow foam shows from under shredded upholstery of a completely indeterminate color. It’s not much, but to Lavi it might as well be a featherbed in a five-star hotel.

“Here.” Allen’s voice comes from behind him. When Lavi turns, Allen hands him a stained, lumpy quilt. “Sleep for as long as you want.”

“Thanks,” Lavi says. Allen could be planning any terrible thing in the world right now, but Lavi doesn’t care. All he wants is to sleep out of the rain, and for once in a long time he is about to get his wish. He leaves his boots and jacket next to the bed and wraps up in the quilt. It smells faintly moldy, but Lavi suspects he himself might be well on the way to smelling moldy.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Allen nods, already on his way out. “Yes. Tomorrow, of course.”

Lavi is asleep before he remembers to ask where the bathroom is.


	2. Rain Dogs

Over the course of two weeks, Allen does not once indicate if he cares what Lavi does. Allen sleeps during the day, and goes out at night, and gradually they form a kind of friendship. Most of what they talk about is of vanishingly little consequence, but nonetheless it starts a rapport. After a few days of making do with Allen’s bizarrely bare kitchen, he bring is up and gets a blank look.

“Do you have anything other than peanut butter and stale bread?”

“Water.”

“What do you eat?”

“I usually get dinner when I’m out.”

“I don’t have the money for that. Can I borrow some money and get something other than… well, get anything at all?”

Allen shrugs, and rummages through his pockets. The money he hands Lavi is crumpled and much abused, but money is money and Lavi takes it. From then on, he keeps the kitchen stocked with cheap soups and noodles. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

When Lavi wakes up at the end of the third week, the light in the room is the dull orange of city light in the rain, and the clock on the ancient microwave says six in the evening. He groans and buries his face in the crook of his arm. It’s been ages since he slept for so long, and while it feels good, his legs are also cramped and his mouth feels foul and gummy. The couch isn’t long enough for him to stretch out fully, and he can feel his knees cramping. Once he finally manages to get the hang of straightening his legs and walking a little bit, he heads for the bathroom. The apartment is about the size of a postage stamp, and the bathroom is little more than a literal closet. The taps squeak in protest when Lavi turns them, and the showerhead spits icy cold water for a few seconds. While he waits for the water to warm up, which does not happen every day, he brushes his teeth, regarding his dim reflection in the mirror. One of these days he’s going to snap and clean the place within an inch of its life; almost everything is covered in dust and grime. Whenever he mentions it to Allen he gets the distracted nod of someone who has meant to get around to something for ages but probably never will. One of the strange things about Allen’s apartment is the absence of mirrors, but there are also no signs of anyone really intending to set up a life here.

To Lavi’s pleasant surprise, the water does warm up and not go straight from cold to scalding like the devil’s used bathwater. Always unsure of when the hot water will shut off, he showers as quickly as possible. It’s usually not a good idea to let himself get too used to the water; it just makes it that much worse when he has to go back out into the cold apartment. The towel is almost made of more holes than cloth, but needing a towel is just a reminder that he has a place to shower now. He toys with the idea of wrapping it around his hair to keep it from dripping too much, but decides it’s not worth the trouble.

Allen wanders out of the one bedroom just as Lavi is deciding between a box of dusty green tea and a box of Earl Grey with a chewed-off corner. One of the two chairs creaks when Allen drops into it, eyes bleary, nearly swimming in a ragged sweater.

“Tea? I think the mice have moved out of the box.”

“No, thanks.”

“I checked and there’s no mouse shit or anything.”

“How’s the job search going?”

“I only woke up recently. How long have you been a vampire?” He decides on the green tea. It’s one of the more reliably good things, and he hasn’t really checked the other box too carefully.

Exactly as Lavi expected, Allen freezes. Nothing shows a hint of movement; he might easily be a finely-painted statue. When he finally speaks, his voice is carefully calm. “How did you guess?”

“It wasn’t that hard.” Lavi settles into the other chair, hands wrapped around a chipped, steaming mug. “I mean, you weren’t precisely hiding it, sleeping all day, partying all night. Never grow old, never die. It’s good to be a vampire, I guess.”

“I do not party all night.” Allen sounds peevish, unfreezing.

“No food in the house, living where nobody gives their real name, not heating the damn apartment, letting the only mirror in the place rust out of its frame—don’t worry, it’s still there—never eating anything… I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. You also look about sixteen.” The tea burns the end of his tongue and he swears under his breath.

“I’m not sixteen.”

“So you really are a vampire.” To Lavi’s surprise, he is quite calm about finding out that his roommate-friend-landlord or whatever is actually a member of the undead bloodsucking legions of hell. All right, perhaps he isn’t as calm as he’d like to think. Still, it’s not so much a shock as a confirmation.

Allen shrugs. “You seem to have it figured out. Please don’t run and scream too much, that always makes such a mess.”

“Yeah, and I know how much you hate cleaning.”

“Right, you see my motivation.”

“Did you take me in for a convenient snack?”

Allen sighs, running his fingers through his hair. It flops back into his face, and Lavi wonders if the traditional inability to change is real and if it extends to hair. “We’re not so different, you know. I’m just trying to live as best I can, and if I can help someone else, then all the better. If I wanted a snack, I’d have started draining you in your sleep weeks ago.”

“So what’s all this?” Lavi gestures vaguely around them at the apartment. “I thought vampires were supposed to be rich and classy and covered in adoring humans.”

“What, I’m not classy?” Allen puts a bare foot on the edge of the table. “We all have our fantasies, and while I would certainly like to have more money than Dracula and Lestat combined, I probably never will. Anyway, aren’t humans supposed to live in houses and have jobs?”

“That’s a low blow, man. I live in a house now, and I asked the guy at the paper stand if he needed any help.”

“You live in my house, and that man doesn’t speak a word of English.”

“I didn’t ask him in English. How’d you end up as a vampire in a shitty apartment?”

“I didn’t like being a vampire on the streets.”

“Did you kill someone and take their home?” Lavi has no idea if he’s trying to make jokes. The questions just pop into his head and out his mouth.

“No. This place was abandoned.”

“How old are you?”

“It’s rude to ask a vampire’s age, we get self-conscious. I will tell you that your drawings the other night were quite accurate, although that particular style of hat wasn’t fashionable until 1888.”

Allen says all of these things with the same air he might have while talking about the weather. Something rumbles, and Lavi isn’t sure if it’s thunder or Allen’s stomach.

“Are you, uh, hungry?”

“Aren’t you hungry when you wake up? Don’t worry, I won’t drink all your blood.”

“Whoa, um, I, uh, I don’t know if we’re quite there yet, you know? Isn’t it sort of a private thing? Feeding from someone?” From what he knows from movies and books, feeding usually ends in death or sex or both, and he’s not quite ready for either this early in his day, even if it is technically night.

“That was a joke. I’m going out anyway.” Allen stands and yawns, and for the first time, Lavi sees all his teeth. All but the front two in the top and bottom are sharply pointed, interlocking fangs, slightly longer than teeth strictly should be. The sight makes him shiver, but not unpleasantly.

“Hey, wait. Before you go.” Lavi has no idea where he is going with this question, but he asks anyway. “How’d you get that scar?”

Silence hangs in the air like wool, suffocating and heavy. “The same way as anyone else does, Lavi. Misfortune. You’re familiar with it.” He stops with his hand on the doorknob. “Maybe some day I’ll tell you. We could trade stories.”

The door does not creak when it closes. Lavi’s tea is cold in his hands now.


	3. Feel the Rain

Somewhere far off, a voice calls. The voice is soft and blurry, and he can’t focus on it. It’s probably important, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s too tired, the kind of aching, cold tired that isn’t quite sleep. If it’s really so important, it’ll still be important when he wakes up. Something heavy holds his entire body down, like a leaden blanket. A leaden blanket of exhaustion and cold.

“…vi! Wake up!”

He tries to flap a hand at the voice. So impatient. Can’t it give him a couple more minutes? If he has to talk to it, he’ll ask it to turn the heat up. He’s freezing.

“Wake up, c’mon…” The voice sounds concerned. Did it leave the stove on or something? Why can’t it calm down and let him rest?

Grudgingly, he opens his eyes. They are sticky and the room is out of focus. A white blob floats near the ceiling. Something about the blob is off, though. The colors are all wrong; the whole thing should be white, but half of it is red.

“Good, that’s right. Don’t try to sit up, just stay like that. Can you hear me?”

Slowly, Lavi starts focusing his eyes on the white thing, which turns out to be Allen’s hair. It is in wild disarray, even for someone who doesn’t do much but ignore their hair. “Hi,” Lavi says thickly. “What’s up?”

“You, ah, passed out.” The bottom half of Allen’s face is awash in heavy red gore. His hands are also stained red, and some of the mess has dripped down to his shirt. An unfamiliar brightness shines in his eyes, a slightly panicked or crazed light.

“What happened to your face?”

“I got hungry,” he says, not meeting Lavi’s bleary gaze.

“You always such a messy eater?” His head is killing him, and his body feels oddly light.

“No. Do you want some orange juice, or anything? You should probably eat.”

“Since when do we have orange juice? Why did I pass out?”

It takes Allen just slightly too long to reply. “I got hungry.”

“What does you being hungry have to do with me passing—wait, did you—did you fucking feed from me?” He can’t really sound demanding when he’s shaking with cold. His voice comes out pathetically weak, and he notices a sharp pain in his neck when he tries to turn his head. This can’t be happening. Allen wouldn’t just attack him like that, they’re friends. Friends do not generally chow down on each other when they can’t be bothered to go out for food.

“It was a mistake,” Allen says quietly.

“You drank so much of my blood that I fainted. I think that might be a mistake, yeah.” He sits up, and his vision sparkles with green and purple fog, the room whirling around him. Maybe moving isn’t the best idea right now.

“I’m not trying to justify it.”

“That’s a relief. What am I supposed to do now that you have half my blood in your stomach?”

“Rest. Shiver. Complain. It wasn’t half your blood, anyway, you’d be dead if I’d taken that much. It was closer to a couple liters.”

With that, Lavi is alone on the couch. No wonder he feels so awful, he just lost more blood that ever in his life. He wraps the moldy quilt around his shoulders and curls up into an icy, miserable ball. It’s not the punctures in his neck that hurt the most, it’s his trust in Allen. Just as he found someone he thought he might be able to actually trust, the kid has to go and rip into his neck like, well, like a vampire. It’s almost a joke, someone gives up on trusting humans and falls in with a vampire, and just as they start getting comfortable everything goes to hell in a cold, bloody hand basket.

“Here,” Allen says, holding out a mug. The blood is gone from his hands and face, although he hasn’t changed his shirt. “This should help a little. I put a lot of sugar in.”

Lavi takes the mug and almost drops it. His grip is weak and his hands tremble, and the mug also feels like it was forged in hell itself. Some of the tea sloshes onto Allen’s hand, but he doesn’t move.

“Careful.” Allen wraps the mug in a corner of the quilt.

“Thanks,” Lavi mumbles, burning his lips on the rim of the mug. The steam curls up past his vision and the heat makes him sniffle. Being so cold without a fever or sickness is strange. The cold is almost inescapable, with nothing else to distract him. “Is your hand okay?”

“Hot water doesn’t bother me, and I can’t really blister.” He still doesn’t meet Lavi’s eyes.

“What does bother you?”

“Fire. The sun. Stakes. Being beheaded. Not very much, really.” Allen perches on the far arm of the couch, looking strikingly owl-like.

“This is good.” Lavi nods at the tea.

“I didn’t spike it, don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I meant, but okay.” The tea does help a little; it warms his hands, and he feels the warmth spreading out from his stomach when he drinks.

“I really am sorry,” Allen says after a while of silence. “I don’t know what came over me. I thought I would be okay if I missed a meal, but… People say I have a big appetite, even for a vampire.”

“It’s…” Lavi trails off. Is it really okay? His friend could have killed him. He could have been reduced to a stain on the couch in a matter of minutes. Instead of finishing his sentence, he changes the subject. “Where do you get money? You’re not old enough to have a job.”

“I steal it from people I kill.” The response is immediate and flat.

“Is that a joke? I can’t tell if that’s a joke.” Hopefully it’s a joke. One of the things Lavi hasn’t been able to figure out very well about Allen is his sense of humor. Sometimes he makes terrible jokes that Lavi still laughs at for some damn reason, and the others he says completely absurd things as if they’re absolute fact. All he can tell is that the kid definitely does have a sense of humor hidden somewhere.

“Yes, it’s a joke.” Allen finally cracks an oddly shy and relieved smile. “I actually play poker for money at some of the gambling places around here.”

“So you steal it from people you trick.”

The smile widens, shark-like. “Yes. That’s what they get for playing against me.”

“You know, you might actually be evil.” With the heat from the tea, he’s starting to feel sleepy. He yawns and puts the empty mug on the floor, knowing that no matter where he puts it now, he will kick it over when he gets up.

“It’s possible,” Allen agrees. “Sleep will make you feel better. I promise not to feed from you again.”

“Just try it. I’ll stake you,” Lavi says, pulling the quilt over his face. He’s too tired to be mad or afraid. Maybe he’ll be more able to sort out his feelings tomorrow, when he will hopefully be less horrifyingly cold. He makes a mental note to ask Allen to use some of his highly legal money to buy them some meat. That night he dreams of a white cat chasing flies around the dingy apartment.


	4. Prayers for Rain

“So you used to be a clown?”

Allen nods, slurping down the last of… something from a particularly battered mug. Ever since he forgot a meal or two that one time, he’s started keeping blood bags in the fridge. Lavi tries very much not to think too deeply about where they come from. “Yeah. I juggled, balanced on things, sometimes did both… I learned some card tricks, too.”

“Did those come before or after the cheating at poker?”

“That’s not a fair question! I have to keep some secrets, you know.”

“Did you ever juggle card tricks? Because that would be really impressive.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t juggle a card trick.”

“That’s why it’d be a sight to see. You’ve got to think outside the box, Allen.”

“That’s too far outside. Look, do you want to see a trick?”

“You read my mind.”

“I sincerely hope I did not. Here,” Allen says, shuffling a deck of worn playing cards. “Pick a card.” He closes his eyes.

Lavi knows a thing or two about probability and slight of hand. Still, he’ll play along. It’s not often one has a magician all to oneself, even if the magician is likely to rob one blind if he so fancies. At as close to random as is possible for a human mind, he grabs a card. The edges are round and frayed, and the checkered back is faded. The wax coating is soft and even.

“Okay,” Lavi says. “I have my card.”

“Do you have it memorized?”

“I have a photographic memory.”

“It’s a habit; not everyone I’ve done this trick for is so lucky.” Allen’s foot taps against the floor, slightly faster than a normal human heartbeat. It’s probably the kind of heartbeat he’s used to hearing. People tend not to be terribly calm when you try to rip their veins open and lick the wounds. “Put it back in the deck.”

The card slips back into place surprisingly smoothly. The gentle fluttering of the deck as Allen shuffles reminds Lavi of something he can’t quite pin down; wings maybe, or leaves on a tree. It’s odd to see someone shuffle cards with their eyes closed, but either Allen is so used to it that he doesn’t need to look, or he can feel exactly what he’s doing. He shuffles seven times, before opening his eyes at last, blinking a little at the light.

He flips the top card face up. “Here you go.”

“That’s not my card.” Lavi raises an eyebrow at the black eight of clubs.

“It’s not? I’m certain I did it right…” Allen drums his fingers on the table, nails clicking faintly. “Wait! I know what I forgot. Of course that’s not your card.”

Okay, so now Lavi is intrigued. He’s seen a card trick or ninety in his time, and while they usually go the way they’re supposed to, he also knows what it looks like when someone’s covering their ass for messing up. Allen seems to have genuinely spotted a mistake, but he has one of the best poker faces on the planet. The kid could be an actor if he wasn’t stuck as a teenager until the end of the world. Most magic tricks rely on misdirection and slight of hand, and even with only one eye Lavi can see right through masters of diversion. Allen hasn’t done anything terrifically theatrical or flashy, and it’s unlikely that he keeps cards up his sleeves all the time.

“Your card…” Allen says, one hand reaching across the table, “is here.” The hand reaches under Lavi’s jacket and dips into the inside pocket. He takes his sweet time fishing around for the card, and if Lavi’s heart jumps a little, it’s only because he’s not used to people reaching under his clothes without any real warning. It wouldn’t matter who it is. Not at all. Even if his damn heart did jump, you couldn’t feel it, not unless you were looking for it, not through his shirt. Not if you were human, at least.

“This is it, right?” Allen holds up the red two of hearts.

It’s frayed more on the upper right corner, just as it should be. “How’d you do that?”

Allen’s grin is the face-splitting one with too many teeth, the one that gives the phrase card shark an uncomfortably literal meaning. “A magician doesn’t share his tricks, Lavi.”

“C’mon, not even to me? Who am I going to tell? It’s not like I’m swimming in friends, especially not magicians. What’s the harm in telling me?”

“It’s a slippery slope. If I tell you, then maybe I’ll tell the next person who asks nicely, and then the next, and before you know it everyone will know all my tricks.” With that, Allen picks up an especially abused paperback and heads to his room.

Lavi busies himself with his bowl of soup and huffs irritably, but doesn’t push any more. Card tricks wouldn’t really be too useful, he already has plenty of distractions for when he needs to pick people’s pockets. Nothing throws people off guard like a pretty face and a polite request.

Heavy, thick rain rattles against the windows, water trickling down the seams. If they had extra towels, Lavi would pack them about the glass to keep the draft and water outside, but Allen barely owns two chairs, let alone linens. Throughout his stay, the apartment has gotten colder with the progressing winter. Each time Lavi wakes up on the couch, he’s more grateful for a place to live. Still, the living room, such as it is, is terribly cold. The glass frosts on the inside in the mornings, and a couple days ago he could swear he saw his breath when he yawned.  
Despite having lived with him for a month, Lavi has never seen Allen’s room. So when he taps on the door and sticks his head in, he doesn’t know what to expect. A huge four-poster bed? A coffin? What he does not expect is nothing. The room is almost completely bare, with only an old, unsettling ink drawing of a clown hanging on the wall above the bed. Flaking green paint covers the walls, and the only window is blocked up with what looks like several layers of tin foil. An old, rickety lamp sits next to the bed, providing a soft, oddly suitable light. The bed is only a bed in the strictest definition; a bed is a place someone sleeps, and presumably Allen sleeps here. It is nothing more than a single mattress on the floor, with a couple sheets tucked around the edges and a lone, exhausted-looking pillow.

“Allen, I’m—is that really all you sleep on?” The question is out of his mouth before he can finish his original sentence.

Allen looks up from his book. “Yes. It’s more comfortable than it looks. What did you want?”

“I was going to go talk to the guy at the paper stand, but now I’m thinking about giving up on life because of this room.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Don’t you have any blankets?”

“I don’t really need them; I’m clinically dead from sunrise to sunset, you know. I can’t feel cold, and I don’t have the ability to prevent sleep like you do.”

“Still, that’s just… it’s sad, and it looks uncomfortable.” Feeling unaccountably guilty, Lavi realizes that he probably now sleeps with the only blanket in the apartment.

“It’s better than outside.” Allen shrugs.

“Why do you even have sheets if you don’t need to keep warm?”

“It’s a holdover from my living days, I suppose. And it keeps the mattress clean. Making the bed is also a good reminder of how to start the day.”

Lavi nods, and resolves to make the apartment look like a place people actually live, as opposed to just using it as a base of operations. He’s alive, damn it, and he’ll live in a home.  
He spends the next day rooting through likely-looking bins and second- and third-hand stores for blankets. Allen might not be able to feel the cold, but wrapping up in soft, heavy layers isn’t just about temperature. Even dead things need a familiar nest for bad days, or lazy days, or just the sake of it. It’s still daylight out, but Lavi is as careful as can be when he sneaks into Allen’s room with three of the cleanest blankets from his haul. The mattress isn’t that large, but curled up under the single white sheet Allen looks even smaller than usual. Anywhere else, he could easily be mistaken for a corpse. He doesn’t breathe, and his skin is even paler than usual, with dark shadows collecting under and around his eyes. Lavi tucks the blankets around him, and spends the day cleaning years of grime off the windows and kitchen surfaces.

The look on Allen’s face when he wanders out of his room with the largest blanket, a heavy blue wool affair with ugly satin around the borders, wrapped around his shoulders is priceless. His eyes are wide with wonder and possibly disbelief, and he nestles into a chair in a mobile heap of blanket. “Did you do this?”

“Yeah. A guy’s got to have something to do.”

“You cleaned the place because you got bored?”

“It was filthy! Do you ever clean? How long have you even lived here?”

“I clean sometimes,” Allen says, folding his arms defensively. “I’ve only lived here for about ten years.”

“Only ten years?”

“It’s not that long for someone like me.”

“How old are you? Like, for real.”

Allen’s smile is mysterious, and Lavi wonders why he suddenly feels rather warmer than he did a minute ago. “A gentleman doesn’t tell his age.”

“Yeah, you’re a gentleman, sure. Did I ever tell you I’m world-famous?”

“I suspect you’re joking.”

“No, I’m entirely serious. I’m a famous unicyclist.”

“You’re definitely joking.”

“Okay, fine.” Lavi throws up his hands. “You caught me. I am not a unicycling champion.”

On the rare, but increasingly frequent, occasions that Allen laughs, he looks the most alive. His eyes light up, and the smile that will never wrinkle infects his whole face. Most of the time, he brings a hand up near his mouth, perhaps to hide his fangs, but honestly Lavi suspects it to be a habit formed when he was still human. It’s astonishingly shy and sweet, and he wishes he could see it more often. Making Allen laugh more is his new goal.


	5. Kiss the Rain

The nights grow longer, the rain heavier, and the apartment even colder. Now that he’s had upwards of a month to dry out, the cold replaces the wet in his bones. No matter what he does, he can’t get warm, even if he stands under the hellishly hot water in the shower until his skin is wrinkled and red. He goes around the apartment wrapped in his moldy quilt like the king of a trash mountain. His crown is an unraveling knitted hat, and his scepter is a mug of tea. Occasionally he wonders if he bleeds tea, he drinks so much of it. Maybe he should ask Allen to check. Ice starts to form about the window seams, and he wears every sock he can find at the same time.

With the longer nights, Allen is awake for longer. It’s not unusual for him to be awake both before Lavi wakes up, and when he goes to bed. Although Allen doesn’t suffer any discomfort from the cold, he does suffer the same effects as any other physical object. He moves more slowly and carefully, almost as if afraid of shattering if he hits something too hard. His hands and feet become stiff, and his fingers sometimes freeze into position. None of this bothers him; rather it’s an annoyance. He wraps up in sweaters and heavy socks, but doesn’t complain of the cold. Sometimes he puts his icy hands on the back of Lavi’s neck when he’s not looking, and Lavi almost jumps through the ceiling. It’s Allen’s idea of a joke, though, and Lavi comes to appreciate it, even if he doesn’t like having hand-shaped ice cubes on his neck.

One day, Lavi feels a hand on his neck, but it’s not cold. It’s a bit cool, yes, but not the freezing, bloodless dryness of Allen’s skin most days. For a moment he is terrified. Someone else is in the apartment, and he didn’t even hear them come in. They could want anything, they could be anyone. They might not even be human, hell, they’re almost definitely not human.  
But then he hears a soft laugh. “Surprised?”

Lavi lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “Yeah, you could say that.” He’s not sure how to ask why Allen doesn’t feel like dead. Hey yeah so why do you feel alive? Why aren’t you all corpsified and gross?

Allen yawns, and the inside of his mouth is terrifyingly, savagely red. His tongue is dark and soft-looking, and his teeth and gums are coated with a thick film of dark pink, but the most striking thing is his lips. Usually they are barely darker than the rest of his skin, but now they are stained crimson. A smear on the side of his face and back of his hand shows where he tried to wipe the mess away. In stark contrast to his violently obvious mouth, the rest of his face is sleepy and relaxed. He drops next to Lavi on the couch with a sigh.  
“I ate a lot,” he says in response to Lavi’s raised eyebrow. “I think one of them might have been drunk.”

“Cool,” Lavi says, shivering. His palms are sweating against the mug in his hands, and the rest of him is dull with cold. “How, uh, how was it?”

“Nice,” Allen says, and turns a lazy grin on Lavi. “It’s been a while since I had that much to eat.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, one shivering, and the other slowly surrendering to the bonelessness of a full stomach. “Hey,” Allen says. “You’re shivering.”

“Yeah, I’m cold. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but it’s fucking freezing in here.”

Allen nods contemplatively. “You know, we get warm if we feed enough.”

“Really? That’s kind of weird.” It’s not often that Allen shares information about vampirism. Usually Lavi is content to listen and ask questions about it, but today he’s too tired and cold for anything like that.

“So I thought I could keep you warm.”

Lavi’s head turns so fast his neck cracks. “What?”

“I said I could keep you warm. You’ve got to be getting cramped on this couch.”

He is honestly at a loss for how to respond. Usually attractive people of any age do not offer to keep him warm, whatever that entails, but especially not vampires who admit to being at least two hundred years old. “I… what?”

“Am I not speaking English? Sometimes I forget what language I’m speaking. Here, let me try again. I could keep you warm, if you like.”

“No, you’re speaking English, don’t worry. It’s just… that’s kind of sudden. I’m not really in the habit of keeping warm with other people.”

“We’re not really strangers anymore, are we? Anyway, it’s just for warmth. I won’t feed from you or anything. And the warmer I am, the easier it is for me to move. Being dead is so inconvenient sometimes…”

“I, ah, can imagine.” He can’t really imagine, having never been dead that he can recall. Lavi worms the end of the blanket out from underneath him. “Here.”

All knees and elbows, Allen folds himself into the blanket next to Lavi, tucking the blanket around them again. For a dead thing with no sense of temperature, Allen is quite good at sharing a blanket nest. He knows how to rest his chin on a shoulder so it doesn’t dig in, and he relaxes against Lavi without putting too much weight on him. With two people instead of one, the nest gets up to a comfortable temperature fairly quickly. For the first time in what feels like about a hundred years, Lavi is able to quell his shivering. He’s astonished by how quickly he gets used to having someone next to him. Lavi isn’t too big on physical contact unless it’s strictly necessary, or unless he starts it. Somehow, Allen’s presence isn’t as distracting as it could be. That said, Lavi still can’t concentrate quite as well on his book as before. Soon, he gives up on reading altogether and just lets himself enjoy the warmth of another person. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s not snuggled against a bloodsucking carcass. Even if Allen is dead, he’s a nice bloodsucking corpse.

“This is nice,” Allen mumbles into Lavi’s shoulder.

“Yeah.” For once, Lavi can honestly agree. It’s been a long time since he was so close to someone who didn’t make his skin crawl.

“Teamwork,” Allen says with a gaping yawn. Lavi is glad he can’t see it. For just a moment, it’s a relief to forget that he’s in a world with vampires and god only knows what else. He can pretend that everything is normal, that he has a normal life with normal friends, that he doesn’t eat canned pasta cold.

“I’ll keep you from freezing solid if you keep me from freezing.”

“Deal. We’re not sleeping on the couch though. I have a bed for a reason.”

Wait. Wait, did Allen just suggest that they share his bed? A week ago Lavi had never even been in his room, and now here Allen is telling him they’re going to have to sleep in his bed. What the hell, Lavi decides. It definitely does get cramped on the couch. He could use an excuse to stretch his legs.


	6. Rain Song

Living with Allen is not a cakewalk. The apartment is in the absolute worst part of town, the part that you don’t want to walk around in past dark unless you absolutely have to or unless you’re either fearless or armed. Lavi is neither fearless nor armed, but he’s used to it. He can avoid notice by slipping along in shadows, by keeping his head down, by going about his business as quickly as possible. For the most part, he doesn’t even look worth bothering. It’s clear he doesn’t have much worth taking, and he’s familiar enough a face to be left alone.

So it’s a shock when someone throws him against a wall and hits him until all he can do is curl himself into a ball with his arms around his head and wait for it to stop. It does stop after about a hundred years, and after another hundred he drags himself home, clutching his head. Head wounds always bleed a lot, but this one is bleeding even more than usual. One particularly sharp kick caught him an inch outside the right eye, right where his skull is thinnest, where veins run just under the skin like faults in marble. He leaves bloody fingerprints in the elevator and on the doorknob. Blood oozes slowly down his face, sticky with cold. He makes several swipes at the door before he can open it; the thing won’t stay still, and everything is oddly flat.

“Lavi, is that—what happened to you? Are you bleeding?”

“Only a little,” he mumbles. The room is blurry, and he stumbles into a chair before quite managing to settle into it.

“Only a little? Take your hand off your eye, let me see something.”

Allen’s cold fingers pry Lavi’s away from his face. Maybe it’s his imagination, but Lavi thinks Allen’s eyes flash with a red sheen for a second when he sees all the blood. As soon as it comes it’s gone, though, and Allen’s eyes are nothing but concern and attention. He does not think too much about how Allen holds his hand, how the cold fingers trace through the thick mess covering his hand.

“You have a concussion,” Allen says. “But that’s not really surprising. Can you stand?”

“Sure,” Lavi says, sounding much more confident than he feels. He does stand, shakily, but ultimately successfully.

Completely without warning, Allen grabs the hem of Lavi’s shirt and tugs it up. The cold air makes him gasp, and Allen makes a disgruntled noise. “That’s no good.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for broken ribs. You have at least three. You shouldn’t even have been able to get home, much less stand around here.”

“I’m just lucky,” Lavi says, not believing himself.

“Go lie down. I’ll help you.”

For someone so small, Allen does a surprising job of helping Lavi down the hall and onto the bed. Allen folds up a blanket and puts it under Lavi’s head and neck, and peers more closely at the bloody side of his face.

“I can’t tell if your skull is cracked. It might be. You’re bleeding too much for it just to be a surface wound. I wonder if they spilt an artery, that would explain all the blood…” A cold, wet cloth presses against the side of his face, and he hisses in pain.

It only now occurs to Lavi that perhaps being tended by a vampire while apparently bleeding uncontrollably from the head is not a good situation. Try as he might to get away, even if he could move, he can’t escape. The ceiling wobbles in and out of focus, and time gets melty and soft. Sometimes it takes hours between breaths and others his heart beats hundreds of times a minute. Something sharp jabs into his lung and he gasps with pain, only making the pain sharper. Fluid gushes into his lung, and suddenly he is drowning, in both agony and some warm, heavy stuff. Coughing doesn’t make it any better, only leads to more pain and an awful tearing feeling. Somewhere over the pale blue pain, there is a voice, but he can’t make out what it wants.

“No, this isn’t want I wanted—stay still, you’ve punctured a lung. Moving will only make it worse—shit, shit, it wasn’t supposed to go this way—”

A hand dives into Lavi’s pockets, turning them out and receiving several old candies, some coins, a lot of dust, and no wallet.

“Of course you don’t have any identification, I can’t take you to a hospital at this rate—”

Everything is so loud and busy, he just wants a break. Just a rest, just a short one, a quick nap.

“Never mind your eye, that’s the least of your problems, god knows you can live without an eye—”

Salty, metallic snakes creep along his throat, making him choke and shudder. He is drowning. He is drowning in his own blood. It bubbles up from his lips, frothing and foaming, choking him with his own life.

“Lavi? Lavi, can you hear me—?”

Yes, he can hear, he’s just tired. Let him sleep a little, he deserves it after such a wild day. He’s hungry, and he didn’t even get to bring dinner home.

“God,” he hears faintly, from far away, “I’m so sorry.”

A new pain flares up in his neck, pinpricks of silver agony. Sleep washes over him in heavy, soft waves.


	7. Reign of Blood

For the first time in living memory, it is not cold. The air is pleasantly warm, the sheets are dry and soft, and he is not sore with the winter curled around him like a wicked stole. His clothes feel a little unpleasant, the way they do when you wear the same thing for too long. It’s dark when he opens his eyes, but not as dark as it could be. The darkness is unusually thin, easier to see through. To his surprise, nothing hurts. Last he remembers, everything was pain, burning, throbbing, aching, stinging pains, all across his body. It’s nice to have it gone now; he’s not complaining. The room is still strangely flat though, and he has trouble judging the distance across to the door. He gets it figured out soon enough, and only bumps into the wall once, not even very hard.

The apartment is quiet. It’s not out of the ordinary for it to be quiet; Allen doesn’t make much noise when he’s alone, and Lavi isn’t in the mood for raising a ruckus right now. The walk down to the kitchen is like floating, he barely feels his feet moving and he feels steadier than he has in ages. Even out of the blankets, he feels warm. Maybe Allen turned on the heat in honor of him bleeding from the face.

“Hello,” Allen says, looking up from his place at the scratched kitchen table.

“Hey. How long was I out?”

“A while. Several hours, I think.”

Something is wrong with his hearing. Everything is perfectly clear, but nothing leaves any aftereffects. Usually sounds leave an impression after one hears them, like the streaks of light after something bright crosses one’s vision, but they are gone now. Noticing it now, he sees that when he moves his eyes quickly he doesn’t see any afterimages when going from one thing to another. His mind exists exclusively in the present, with no traces of the past or anticipations of the future to detract from what he sees and hears in one instant.

“Am I… Am I okay?” It feels like a foolish question. He’s standing, and nothing hurts. He’s not even hungry, and it’s been god knows how long since he ate.

Allen looks him dead in the eye, unblinking. “You should be fine.”

“I feel funny. Not bad, just… weird.” Nothing in the kitchen interests him, even though he knows he should drink something after sleeping for so long. The idea of going out for something to eat doesn’t really appeal to him either; even the thought of his favorite foods doesn’t raise any particular interest. He doesn’t feel hungry or full or even satisfied. His stomach feels oddly light, as if it is empty of even acid.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, it’s weird. I should be, but I’m not.”

Allen twists a chunk of hair around his finger. “That’s good, then.”

If there is a thing Lavi can smell better than food, it is a dearth of information, and this one stinks like a day-old carcass left out in the sun. He does not have all the facts, but he suspects he knows who does. He sits down across from Allen, hands folded on the table.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Maybe Allen’s poker face comes from years or experience, or maybe he was born with it. Either way, it doesn’t have a single crack to be seen. Lavi will just have to put the cracks there on his own. Staring people down isn’t something Lavi has a lot of experience at, but nonetheless Allen looks away first.

Every so often Allen does something remarkably human, like mention holes in his socks even though he can’t feel the cold, or swear when he stubs his toe, or say that something Lavi is eating smells good. Now, he sighs and runs his hands through his hair. Even though he can’t age, he looks tired and old, skin drawn tight around the bones in his face, like thin parchment with human features inked on and starting to fade.

“I turned you. Into a… into something like me.” Allen does not meet Lavi’s eyes. The edges of his voice are tinted with desperation, either for forgiveness or a rush to explain himself. “It was the only way to save you. One of your ribs had punctured your lung and you were dying.”

“So you thought the best way to save my life was to kill me.”

“You’re only physically dead, not emotionally or psychologically. Your heart doesn’t beat and you don’t need to breathe, but you can still go about your life. It’s easier this way, sometimes. You’ll see things you never thought you would ever see, you’ll have more time than anyone has ever had.” Now Allen looks at him, and to Lavi’s surprise, nothing feels different. Allen is still his friend, or more, honestly more than a friend at this point, and he saved his life, albeit in an unorthodox and slightly clichéd fashion.

His eye still doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it feels sealed shut, and no matter what he does it won’t open. “I still show up in mirrors, right?”

“Yeah, but after about ten years you get so used to your own reflection that you don’t need to see it. You learn to guess what your hair is doing, and it’s not like your face is going to change.”

The bathroom mirror is as filthy as ever, but his reflection is as clear as ever. He looks mostly fine, but a cold shock runs through him anyway, electricity through his bones. The left side of his face is untouched, eye bright and skin unmarred. His right eye, however, is destroyed; covered in a pale, cloudy film, his pupil reflects light like a cat’s eye. His eyelid must have split open when he was attacked, but it healed back together in a ragged scar when he died. Opening and closing his eye takes a concerted effort, and the heavy scar tissue in his eyelid feels wrong and abrasive.

“My eye isn’t going to change, is it,” he says, sitting back at the table.

“No, probably not. The healing can only do so much, and it did what it could. Your eye must have been secondary to your lung. We usually all end up with some reminder of our last days as humans.” Allen’s smile is gentle and sad.

“So I’m a blood-drinking fiend,” Lavi observes, mainly to himself.

“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.” Allen sounds a little hurt.

“I meant it in a nice way.”

Allen breaks the silence after a few minutes. “Are you hungry?”

“Do I have to go out and kill someone?”

“Only if you want. I was going to warm up a blood bag and put it in a mug and maybe add a cinnamon stick so you could pretend it’s tea.”

“Do cinnamon sticks really help?”

“I like them. It adds a little extra taste.”

Of all the conversations Lavi has had since moving in, this is one of the strangest. They are at the kitchen table, discussing the merits of flavoring human blood for best consumption as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Do I have to move out? Vampires don’t usually share territory, do they?” Lavi will win the award for most ignorant vampire for sure.

“I don’t think that will be necessary. We share with friends and partners of various sorts, and everyone around here has already noticed that you’ve smelled like me for two months or so. You should stay here with me. I’d get lonely without you.”

“Well.” It’s as close to any kind of admission or invitation as Allen has gotten. Their relationship hasn’t had any definable markers or milestones, it happened and they both went along with it. “I guess I can’t say no to that. It’s not every day someone asks me to live with them.”

“Good. Thank you,” Allen says, standing. Lavi watches him rattle about the kitchen retrieving a blood bag, a mug, and a cinnamon stick. Although the mug should be hot, Allen takes it out of the microwave without flinching, and stirs it with the cinnamon stick.

The heat from the mug sinks into Lavi’s hands, but doesn’t burn. His palms should be sweating, but his skin stays paper-dry. Curls of steam rise from the mug, tickling his nose. The blood, when he works up the courage to taste it, is sweet and thick. With the cinnamon he can almost convince himself that it’s actually tea or soup, and not blood, although the thought doesn’t turn his stomach as much as he thought it might. His teeth feel oddly slick when he drinks, as if the blood clings to them in a viscous membrane. For a second, he worries that he might cut his tongue on his new fangs, but he seems to be in no more danger of that than yesterday when he was alive.

“If we’re going to be alive for the next five hundred years or something, we have to get a better place next time. This place is okay, but it’s depressing. Maybe you’re fine with living in a drafty, leaking place, but I’m not. We’re going to live somewhere you can’t hear the wind coming through the windows, and where there isn’t frost inside.”  
Allen rolls his eyes dramatically. “If you insist, I suppose we can look into moving in a few years. People will start wondering why I don’t change soon anyway. You’ll need an eye patch, I think. It’ll give people something to wonder about other than why you always look the same.”

So this is really happening. He’s dead, and now undead, and insisting on better living conditions. He is going to spend god knows how long with another vampire, and presumably learn to do vampire things.

“Now that you have forever,” Allen says, “what have you always wanted to do?”

“Travel. I want to go everywhere.” The answer is immediate. Lavi has seen some surprising parts of the world, but now he intends to see every last inch of the thing. Just because he’s undead isn’t an excuse to let his mind or desire for information flag.

“Then we should start walking. It’ll take us a while to get where we want to go.”

Lavi takes Allen’s outstretched hand. The whole world is theirs to see.


End file.
